Weddings, Where Did It All Start?

By: Richard Cohn

It started with a kiss, or so Hot Chocolate sung in 1982, but the history of weddings is a little more politics than passion when you look back at how they were done in ye olden days.

Looking back deep into the history of mankind we can see that men and women have come together into a family unit in many different ways and for many different reasons. The religious contract of marriage between a man a woman and their deity of choice has only been Globally accepted for the last few hundred years, so what were people doing before then?

The caveman and cavewoman, not that there was as much to differentiate them then as there is now, looked at the idea of the wedding arrangement from a very basic perspective. Whilst nobody really knows whether the stereotypical image of Mr Ugh (with a silent “h”) dragging his mate-to-be away for their nuptials or just for the night was what really happened, but it is now known that communities knew the benefits of having a strong and numerous group to fend off natural predators and other tribes bent on taking their homes and hunting ground for their own. Mrs Ugh (with a silent “h”) would undoubtedly have had little say in the matter but at least she would not have had to listen to any excuses about an early squash game the next morning (partly due to the fact that squash would not be invented until 1830 at Harrow School, London, England).

Fast forward a little way and the blissful union between man and woman has turned uglier than Mr Ugh and that’s saying something, sorry Mr Ugh. It was common practice for men from one village or tribe to raid another and carry off the women as spoils of war or trophies. The bigger your tribe was the less likely it was that you would be harassed by others and the safer everyone you knew would be. So stealing the women to produce more tribesmen to defend your village from being attacked in the same way was very common practice. Man lived in an era of “I want, I take”, and if you ask some women today they would argue that era never ended, but they were simpler times, when man was ruled by the brutal forces of nature where only the strong survived. If a man saw a woman he wanted there would be no extended courting, no asking the father for his daughter’s hand in marriage, he and members of his tribe would simply take what they wanted. The honeymoon would usually be spent dealing with the consequences of this in a fairly bloody fashion.

Women, if you have felt in the past that you were being treated like someone’s property, that’s nothing compared with the way you would have been treated in less enlightened times. Women were considered almost legal tender throughout many of the periods researched for this article. They were bartered and sold as the property of wealthy or powerful men, for financial and political gain. Alliances were forged between tribes by marrying off their chieftain’s sons and daughters to one another. Size mattered, and those tribes that stuck together against their enemies survived and prospered whilst others died out or came to a sudden end at the point of someone else’s spear!

The use of marriage as a political tool continued for many centuries as tribal elders became chieftains and chieftains became kings whose domains became countries. Their daughters and sons were simply players on the political field and marriage a means to a political end. Many truces and alliances were forged in Europe through royal marriages. Love was a luxury the royal heirs did not have. The common man (and woman) however benefited from far more enlightened attitudes. Whilst kings and queens were married off to one another leaving love to chance, their people had learnt long ago that there was more to marriage than land alone.

Over more recent centuries the amount of love that determined whether a boy and a girl would marry was directly proportional to their social standing and family wealth. The more well-to-do the family was the more likely it would be a financial or business decision that would decide who the bride or groom would be. Arranged marriages are of course still common in some religions, and many are still based on finding a suitable partner from the same social or fiscal background. Anyone who has been adventurous enough to use online dating or been set-up by their friends with someone “who’s just your type” will know that there is some merit to arranged marriages.

Today we live in a world of freedom and choice. Brides are no longer sold, women are not property or trophies of battle, families have less influence over who their siblings marry, and men and women who want to show the endurance of their love for one another in the company of friends and family do so through the institution of marriage. Weddings are now glorious affairs, happy occasions thick with traditions the history of which most people never question (such as why do we have wedding rings? What is the symbolism of the wedding cake? Why do we go on honeymoon?). But with all the mysteries, expenses and stresses of arranging a wedding, they are still one of the happiest and most memorable days of anyone’s life. Mr & Mrs Ugh did live in simpler times, but to be a bride or a groom at the perfect wedding is the stuff of dreams.

Article Source: http://www.relationshipsarticlelibrary.com

Richard is one half of One Perfect Day Wedding Planners. Richard and Faye can help you with any aspect of planning or co-ordinating your perfect wedding day. For more information please do look at www.one-perfect-day.co.uk

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